Dantoo Trek
by eschscholzia
Summary: When Chopper strands them in the wilderness, Ezra and Sabine have to put aside their argument and work together as a team. How will they get to their detail at Dantoo Base? This epic buddy road trip calls for a MacGyver-ed boat and the smooth skills of Lothal's most notorious flim flam man. A story for the Rebels May the 4th 2018 Gift Exchange, for AceOfStars16.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: This is my gift to AceOfStars16 for the Rebels May the Fourth Gift Exchange. My prompt was "Sabine and Ezra (platonic or romantic), stranded, and fluff." This takes place between the Season 3 episodes "The Last Battle" and "Imperial SuperCommandos" in order to constrain what they did and did not have at their disposal. I went the platonic sibling route, for story purposes. For more notes, please see the end of the story.

* * *

"If you would just look before you rinse your paintbrushes, you wouldn't have ruined my favorite orange shirt!"

"Oh yeah, well maybe if you wouldn't leave your half-done laundry in the sink for hours, it wouldn't have happened!"

Sabine stomped her way down the gangplank of the shuttle, following close behind her partner. Their bickering was punctuated by the ring of their boots on the metal.

"That's not my fault! The laundry unit was bro…." Ezra's voice cut off abruptly. "Wait, where's the base?"

Sabine stopped up short to avoid running into him; her boots crunched in the dirt and gravel. She quickly assessed the narrow strand where they stood between a swift river and a copse of trees. On either side of the river towered sheer cliff faces. She shielded her eyes with her hand to see the far wall: it was still steeped in shadow. It was barely daybreak, so the sunlight did not yet fully reach the canyon bottom. Ezra turned around to face the shuttle, where the gangplank was winding closed behind them. "Chop!" he yelled.

Sabine whirled around as well; she slammed the comm on her wrist. "Chopper, what are you doing? You're supposed to let us offload the rest of our supplies!"

There was a tap on her shoulder.

"I don't think this is the right place. Where is everyone?" Ezra waved his arms at their surroundings.

The thrusters hissed, and the _Phantom II_ began to lift from the ground. Dust and dry leaf-needles washed over them, making her cough. Sabine tried to raise Chopper again. "Chopper, what's going on here?" she demanded. Her voice felt thick in her mouth.

This time Chopper responded. "Whoop waaa, whoop waaa waaa," the droid cackled, barely audible over the static. The _Phantom II_ steadied itself, then took off.

"Chopper!" Ezra screamed, hands cupped around his mouth. They watched as the shuttle crested the canyon wall and was soon out of sight.

Sabine continued to try to raise the rebellious droid on her wrist-comm. "Chopper! Chopper! You come back here right this minute!"

She heard only static in return. She growled and cut the connection. The air was silent, except for a bird chirruping in from a branch and the sound of the river flowing nearby.

Ezra slipped his pack off his slumped shoulders and dropped it to the ground. Sabine's stomach twisted with concern as Ezra stumbled to the edge of the clearing and sat down with his back to a tree trunk. He folded his arms across his chest.

"That stupid bucket of bolts stranded us." he murmured. "Why would he do this? He has to have a few corrupted circuits that are programmed only for spite…."

Ezra tried to activate his wrist-comm. "Hera? Hera? Can you hear us? Atollon, we have a problem."

"It's no use, Ezra." Sabine walked toward him. She didn't want him to slip into another fugue of darkness again; he'd only recently been getting better. She held out her hands, fingers spread. "I think those flares from Dantooine's sun as we were coming in have blocked communications. Too much electromagnetism in the atmosphere. We'll have to wait until it dissipates. It's probably why there was so much static just talking to Chopper from right next to the shuttle."

"Really?" Ezra's voice cracked. He tipped his head back against the mottled bark of the tree. He closed his eyes as if to steady himself. After a few moments, Ezra reopened his eyes. He uncrossed his arms, and placed his palms on the ground next to him. With new calm, he asked, "how far do you suppose we are from the base?"

He paused a moment, then his blue eyes widened. "Wait, can we even be sure we are on Dantooine?"

Sabine tapped a different button on her wrist comm and a terrain holo appeared. She rotated the view so that it oriented the direction they faced. She twisted her lips, tapping them with one slender finger. "Hmm…"

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"This is a setback. We are on Dantooine, but we aren't anywhere near Dantoo Base." She pinched into the terrain, zooming in to see the detail. "Look. We're at the bottom of this canyon, here. My positional accuracy isn't very good because of the interference, but I think we're somewhere in this reach." She gestured to a small wide spot in a bend of the river. She flicked her fingers open to zoom out. "But the base is all the way over here."

Sabine went silent for a moment; she teased the map back and forth as she analyzed different routes. "The biggest problem is the walls of this canyon. It's too sheer for us to climb, especially with no climbing harnesses. If I had the jetpack I've always wanted, I could fly us up and out."

"If I were stronger in the Force, I could jump us out of here."

"And if wishes were nerf, we could ride," Sabine said. She tried to sound firm and more confident than she felt.

"I think the only way out is downriver." She flicked the map downstream, until the canyon mouth opened up on a wider plain. "Here is Dantoo Town. The river takes some meanders, but it is about 35 klicks south of here as the shriek-hawk flies."

Ezra stood up from his seat at the base of the tree. He closed the gap with Sabine in a few steps. He frowned as he stared at Sabine's terrain map. "I'm not so good at swimming."

"We'll need a boat," she said. "This is far too long to swim." She pivoted on her foot and began to walk along the narrow strand lost in thought. By rote, she went back to tapping her lips again, lost in contemplation. " _Ponder and deliberate before you make a move_ ," said the old Mandalorian whose name was lost to time.

Ezra broke into her thoughts after only a short time, when her plan had just begun to formulate. "Okay, so how are we going to get a boat?"

"I'm thinking about that." She reached the end of the strand and made her way back towards him. Ezra turned in a slow circle, as if gauging the walls for some new handhold. Sabine knew it was useless; the extended height and sheer walls made free climbing out of the question. Ezra noticed some leaf litter on the edge of his orange shirt, and tried to brush it off. It was stuck with some sort of sap that had hardened. "Rats. Another shirt ruined! I got sap all over it from the tree. It's my third-favorite one!"

Sabine stopped pacing and looked up. "That's it!"

"What?"

"The sap. Ezra, grab your kit and bring it here."

By the time Ezra did as she suggested, Sabine had already taken a spot on the ground. She emptied out her pack, hefting each item in her hand before setting it next to her.

"Did you pack all your essentials?" she asked.

"Well, yeah," he replied. "Kanan would never let me hear the end of it if I left on a mission unprepared."

"Aha!" There was her rain poncho, finally. She pulled it out and laid it in front of her. "That's what I needed. How about you? We'll need yours, too."

"Umm—" he fished in his pack— "here it is." He handed it to her, and it went on the ground with the other poncho.

"How about some string? Do you have any string?"

Ezra searched again, and pulled out a neat coil of cordage. "Here." His eyebrows narrowed. "So what do you need all this for?"

Sabine looked up at Ezra, fixing him with her gaze. Leadership training came back to her: lean on her confidence. She knew Ezra's strengths, and her own. She knew their weaknesses, and would do her best to bring them both out of this. " _If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles,_ "said the old Mandalorian.

"So here's the plan: we're going to build a boat."

"Build?" Ezra's voice wavered.

Sabine shrugged. "Sure. This is just like we used to have exercises when I was an Imperial cadet. They'd give us a box of random things and we'd have to use our creativity and the items to solve the problem. We're going to build a boat based on what we have in our packs and what is on this riverbank."

Ezra leaned forward, tapping his finger on his pack. "Nice. What's next?"

Sabine looked around. "I'm going to collect some of that sap to seal the edges of our rain gear. Can you gather us some of those willows over there, and two big tree branches for poles?"

Ezra nodded, and they went right to work. Sabine was glad the local needle-leaf trees seemed to be a sticky sort. It was unfortunate for Ezra's third-favorite orange shirt, but lucky for boat-building. At the slightest disturbance of the bark, sap welled up around the edges, which Sabine collected on a flat piece of driftwood she found along the bank. She carried her palette back to the work area, where she spread the sap on the overlapped poncho seams. It stuck to her fingers, pulling up in long strands of amber gooeyness each time she dipped into it, but hardened quickly in the cool morning air.

"I wish I had a paintbrush," she said. "But this would probably ruin them. I used to love painting with my fingers as a kid. I wasn't as discriminating as an artist back then." She laughed, a musical trill.

Ezra made his way among the willow brake, using his lightsaber to collect the tallest pieces. He carried them back slung over his shoulder, and dropped them with a clatter in the open space that had become their work area.

Sabine sighed; he was so careless.

Kneeling in the tufts of grass and gravel, she took the scattered heap and arranged the willow branches neatly by length. Sabine laid them out in a lattice framework after she bent each one to test it. She wove them together— over under, over under— to make the flat bottom of the coracle. Ezra held each joint together while she lashed the intersections with the cord for reinforcement. Finally they bent up the sides and finished it with a sturdy brace of willows around the edge.

Ezra and Sabine stepped back to admire their work. The sun was finally over the edge of the canyon wall, and it was getting warm. Ezra brought out his canteen. "Not bad," he said, as he wiped a drop of water from his mouth.

Sabine smiled. "Now we have to attach our rain gear to make a hull."

They upended the frame on the grass. This time both of them had the enjoyment of gathering more sap and dipping their hands to spread it along the frame. Working as a team, they lifted the combined poncho fabric and placed it over the frame. When the sap dried after another short break, they flipped the frame back over to fit the edges of the fabric around the gunwhale.

"There you have it," Sabine said. "One coracle."

"I hope this works." Ezra took a step closer, gently prodding sections in turn.

"There's only one way to find out, and the alternative is we sit here until someone from the Base comes looking for us." Sabine snorted. "And who knows what story Chopper's cooked up, so they may not even be looking for us."

Ezra shuddered. "I'm starving. Let's eat lunch," he suggested, to Sabine's agreement. She sat down in a patch of grass— she was not going to lean against a tree and chance ruining the paint on her armor. Ezra undid the flap of his pack and pulled out a ration bar. He wandered to the water's edge and perched on a boulder next to the river. Sabine watched as he pulled off his boots and set them on the gravel at the water's edge. Hesitating for a moment, his toe hovered over the water and then dipped in. She smiled when the toe came right back out.

"Wow, that's cold!" Ezra exclaimed.

"Just think how it would be earlier in the melt season!" Sabine called back. "We won't die, but we can't go swimming in it, for sure."

"I've never been to a stream like this," he said. "It's all shallow warm rivers on Lothal."

Always a student of colors, Sabine observed that the river rocks were part gray, part white— different colors above and below— demarcating the river's flood stage. She hoped it would not rain today. She looked up at the clear sky, where two brith circled on the currents, flapping their wings in lazy strokes. The sun was almost overhead now; the morning was consumed during their labors.

Sabine nibbled at her ration bar, watching as Ezra gobbled his down. When she was done, she stood up and brushed the dust from her armor. "I'm going to visit a tree, and then I say we get going. How about it?"

Ezra nodded. "Sounds good. You head that way- I'm going to walk this way." He pointed in an opposite direction. The teenagers looked at each other, the awkwardness hanging in the air for just a heartbeat too long.

"Right," said Sabine. She turned on her heel, and walked upstream. In a canyon this small, it would be hard to get 70 paces from the stream, but she figured she'd just have to do her best. It would be too awkward to run into Ezra…. Ugh, she didn't want to think in that direction.

When they each returned to the bank, they stood looking at their small craft, gear in hand. Perhaps it was trepidation, perhaps it was disbelief. But they had to go forward.


	2. Chapter 2

_When they had each returned to the bank, they stood looking at their small craft, gear in hand. Perhaps it was trepidation, perhaps it was disbelief. But they had to go forward._

Ezra broke the silence first. "Well, here goes." They each took a side of the boat and carried it to the water's edge. He set his pack in the center, next to Sabine's. Sabine set her helmet carefully on top. Sabine climbed in the front of the coracle, and Ezra pushed off. He handed her both poles, and then holding the edge with both hands, he climbed into the craft. It rocked a little but held. They both let out their breath.

"Let's give this the old Spectre try," Sabine said.

"Do or do not, there is not try," Ezra replied. Even without using the Force, he knew she had rolled her eyes at him. As predictable as a prairie-fowl in June, Sabine was.

It took them a few minutes to get the hang of working together to propel the boat downriver. The water was calm at first, but began to pick up speed. In the distance, they could hear a rushing sound that grew louder.

"I think those are our first rapids," Sabine shouted back to him. "We're going to have to go through. I don't think there's a portage."

Ezra's stomach dropped. " _Deep breaths_ ," Kanan would say. This was their way to get out of the wilderness, to make it to the Rebel base. _All is as the Force wills_ , Ezra thought. He just hoped the Force didn't will them a swamped boat and dashed to pieces on the rocks.

Sabine looked back at him over her shoulder. "When we get to the rapids, don't get scared," she explained. "You've got to keep paddling. Your instinct will be to stop, we will have better control if we keep polling."

 _Know-it-all_ , Ezra thought. "How do you know so much about this?"

"We used to go whitewater rafting at the Academy."

Ezra knew she was going to say that. "Academy, schmademy," he muttered under his breath. Luckily the noise that echoed through the canyon walls masked his words.

"Who put you in charge of this mission, anyhow," he called to her back.

"Remember what happened the last time you were in charge of a mission?" Sabine shouted over her shoulder. "Let's see, do the words ' _Reklam Station_ ' mean anything to you?"

"Let's say we're both in charge," he bargained.

All too soon they reached the brink of the rapids. The river foamed and churned between the rocks, but Ezra felt a tug to the right bank in the Force. " _Trust your instincts_ ," Kanan would say. "There's a good channel on the right," he called ahead. They steered their coracle toward the chute.

As much as Ezra hated to admit it, Sabine was correct. The water somersaulted around the obstacles; would they be swamped? He did want to hunker down in the boat, but he did his best to keep pushing with the poles. With a stomach-lurching rise and then sudden drop, the boat crested over one last wave, and they were in calmer water again.

Ezra blinked a few times to clear the water from his eyes. "Woohoo!" The sound echoed off the canyon walls. "That was amazing, 'Bine! Let's do that again!" In the thrill of success, his original terror was forgotten.

Sabine turned to roll her eyes at him. "Good job, Spectre 6. You made it through your first rapids."

There was a little sandbar shortly after that, where the two stopped and bailed water from the boat before they continued on. The afternoon passed in much the same pattern: reaches of smooth water interspersed with more rapids. So far their small boat had done well. Ezra trailed his hands in the water sometimes, but was scolded by Sabine, who could always tell when he slacked off.

"Do you want to get to some semblance of civilization? We're not on a pleasure cruise."

Chastened, Ezra snatched his hand back, shaking off the water droplets. He went back to his share of polling. He didn't try to explain to Sabine that the number of times he'd been in a boat in his life could be counted on one hand. There weren't many rivers like this on the flat grasslands of Lothal.

Finally the walls of the canyon grew diminished, and after one last chute, the mouth opened into a broad floodplain of low hills. Following the meandering channel, they arrived within sight of Dantoo Town. They stumbled out of the little boat onto dry land, and looked at the medium-sized town in the near distance.

The sun was well past its peak, signalling the afternoon was almost over.

"We won't be able to get to the Rebel base before nightfall," Sabine said.

"We'll have to leave the boat here." Ezra nudged the coracle with his toe. "I think our rain gear are pretty well messed up. They aren't going to fit us like that any more."

"I hate to leave it here. I wish we could take it with us." Sabine's voice drifted off, wistful.

The silence between the two teenagers was interrupted when Ezra's stomach rumbled. "We'll need to find some food at some point. I'd rather save our ration bars for last." He looked up at the clear blue sky. There would be no monsoons today. "At least it's summer in this hemisphere, so we won't need shelter tonight."

"Okay, Force-brain: how are we going to find food?" Sabine's eyebrows raised so high Ezra thought they might disappear into her hairline. "'Are you going to charm the garfish out of the river? Persuade a kath hound to hunt for you?" Sabine stopped abruptly; she stared at Ezra as he raised his arm, two fingers outstretched.

Ezra's smirk faded as Sabine reached out to swat his forearm down. "Please don't," she said, her voice small.

Ezra met her eyes, seeing her concern. He nodded. "Okay, no kath-hounds."

"Please. I was bitten by a salky as a little girl."

Ezra bent to pick up their packs. He swung his own over his shoulder, and handed Sabine's bag to her. He grinned and skipped backwards in front of her, waggling his fingers. "Maybe I can find a sweet purple furball of a tooka for you?" He hoped that would lighten the mood.

"Hmm…," was all she said.

A small road just wide enough for one speeder led up from the river towards town. After only a short brisk walk, they passed a billboard that read "Welcome to Dantoo Town, Populat…" The number had peeled away. How long since anyone had noticed, he wondered? Did travelers so rarely arrive by way of the river?

Just beyond the sign they saw stucco buildings with brightly painted windows and doors. By following the road, they arrived at the central marketplace of Dantoo Town. The vendor stalls were still open for the second shopping session of the day. There were all manner of goods from vegetables and fruit to funny-textured woven cloth to salted fish hung on strings from the awnings. Sabine nudged Ezra.

"There's your Dantooinian garfish. Try charming that, Loth-rat."

Ezra laughed. He was still staring at the strange-snouted garfish and didn't notice when Sabine stopped up short, and ran into her back.

"Ow! Watch where you're going!" he exclaimed.

Then he looked in the same direction that she was looking. In one corner of the marketplace, there was a small cafe with a patio and tables. Locals enjoyed the nice weather at the end of the day, chatting and laughing with each other over their dinners. This was not in of itself unusual; it could be seen in almost any town on any planet in any sector. He soon realized that what captured her attention were the large bulbous glassware vessels positioned on the tables in front of the cafe patrons. A multitude of curly and straight tubes grew out of each axis of the bulbs.

"Ice twists." Sabine said. Her voice was filled with awe and surprise. She pointed at the sign over the cafe, which proclaimed: Iriq's Ice Twists.

"Excuse me?" Ezra raised an eyebrow. "What's an ice twist?"

Sabine turned to face him. She struggled for a moment to find words. Finally she swallowed hard. "Ice twists. They're a delicacy outside Raioballo sector. I only ever found them once on Kalevala, but Mother said we didn't have time to stop and get one." She sighed. "Now we have the time, but no credits."

Ezra blinked a few times. He looked down at his feet. When he looked up again, he felt a grin reaching so far across his face he wondered if it might split his scars. "Do you trust me, Spectre 5?"

"Of course, Spectre 6."

Ezra took her hand. "Okay, then follow me." He winked. "And whatever happens, back me up."

They threaded their way through the crowds of beings. Just inside the gate of the patio, the teenagers sat down at an empty table. A short moment later, a balding middle-aged man with a large white apron tied over his local-style robes stopped at their table.

"Good afternoon, strangers," the man said.

"Good afternoon!" Ezra replied. "We're looking for Iriq. Are you him?"

The man seemed taken aback. He narrowed his eyes, sizing up the two teenagers. "Yes, that's me. Why do you ask?"

"Well, I'm Jabba, and this is my business partner Meiloo Wren." Ezra pointed to Sabine. He held his palm out to Iriq. "We are here because we heard that your cafe was rated the number two best Dantooine Ice-twist in the Raiobello sector on the Holo-polls, and we wanted to try it out. You see, we write for a magazine, and we wanted to include it in our feature magazine story on The Most Perfect Day on Dantooine."

Iriq seemed less than fully convinced. His shoulders tensed up. "A holo magazine?" he asked. "You're just teenagers."

Sabine kicked Ezra under the table and broke in. "Exactly! We write for a kids' magazine called _Yai'yai Oya!_ It's all for a marketing perspective. Think about how persuasive kids can be in asking parents to use the discretionary spending on treats like ice-twists."

Iriq tugged his ear. "A magazine you, say? What's your distribution?"

Ezra nodded, his blue eyes huge with the most sincere expression he could muster. "We have readers all over the Outer Rim, and some channels in the Mid Rim, too!"

Iriq thought for a moment. "I'll tell you what," he said, smiling. "Have a special summer fruit twist on me. Compliments of the house."

He turned and snapped his fingers at his assistant, a Sullastan in a matching white apron to his own. As soon as Iriq went away, the kids gaped at each other. Ezra felt smug at Sabine's lips were rounded in surprise. He felt the familiar tickle in the back of his head from his days running minor cons on Lothal. He hadn't lost his touch.

In no time at all, the Sullastan brought them their own large ice-twist bulb to share. Ezra's jaw dropped. "That's huge! Good thing there's two of us to share it."

Sabine leaned in to sniff the tubes, which had begun to frost over in the summer air. It smelled like melons and jogan. " _Buy'ce gal, buy'ce tal,_ " she murmured. She took a sip. "This is really good!" She bounced in her chair. "I can't believe I'm actually trying one of these, and on Dantooine!"

Ezra had been leaning back in his chair, one arm draped over the side, trying to look nonchalant and totally not like half of a galactic flim flam. When he saw Sabine's reaction, he sat forward; a warm satisfied glow spread through him. "Seeing your face was totally worth it," he said. Then he took a long pull on the spout closest to him. A sharp pain shot through the roof of his mouth and behind his eyes. "Ow-uh!" He rubbed his forehead. "Brain freeze!"

Sabine chuckled. "You have to pace yourself."

"It's good, though." Ezra leaned in for another gulp, but a little more measured this time.

When they had finished, Iriq stopped by their table again. "How was it?"

"It was wonderful," Sabine gushed. "Everything we've heard was true. We'll give you a glowing write up in our recommendations."

Iriq rubbed his hands together. "Terrific! Terrific!"

"In case we have any follow-up questions, can we have your business chip?" she asked.

"Most certainly." Iriq leaned for the nearby counter and pulled a small chip out a tray. "And may I have one of yours as well?"

Sabine kicked Ezra under the table. "Jabba, do you have one?"

Ezra felt his waist and leg holster. "Oh bother," he said. "I seem to have given them all out."

Sabine turned to the cafe owner. "Perhaps next time," she said, her smile glittering. She stood to go. "Shall we, Jabba? We need to do some more research for our story."

Ezra blinked. "Oh. Oh!" He cleared his throat. "Why yes, we need to visit some of the vendors for our sidebar on, umm, Dantoo Town crafts."

The teenagers waved to Iriq and his server, and made their way away from the cafe as quickly as they could. It was less crowded now as people headed home; the evening marketing was over, for the most part. They turned down an empty side street. Ezra leaned his back against the wall, willing his racing heart to slow down. Sabine stopped next to him, one hand against the same wall, as if she held herself up against the laughter that welled up from her.

"You were amazing, Loth-rat," she said, half-bent over, shoulders heaving.

Ezra shrugged. "It's all in a day's work on the streets. You just have to play to their vanity. Nice save, there too, with the Mandalorian magazine name. Who do we work for?"

"I guess you could translate it to 'Shouting about Food,' or some such," Sabine replied. "I didn't have time to think up something good; it just rolled off my tongue."

Ezra looked back down the side street, which was steeped in shadows. By this time the sun was almost gone behind the buildings. "Okay 'Bine: I think we can count that as our dinner, but now let's work on finding a place to sleep. I know just the place."

Sabine pushed herself off the wall with one hand, and made a grand sweeping gesture with her other. "After you, Spectre 6."

Ezra led them back to the outskirts of Dantoo Town. He stopped before the billboard they had passed on their way in.

Sabine looked between the billboard and her business partner. Ezra knew she was annoyed: she had one hand on her hip.

"You're proposing we sleep here? What about on somebody's roof? Or a park?" She pointed to a nearby blba tree. "What about under that?"

"Have you seen the spines on that thing?" Ezra asked. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "I spent all those years on the streets. This is the one place nobody will ever find us. Everybody looks at a billboard. Nobody looks behind them."

He turned away from her, and begin to make sweeping motions with his arm, laying the tall purple-gray grasses down in a swale. Sabine sighed and set her pack and helmet down next to Ezra's.

"Okey doke, Loth-rat. This better work." She moved slightly over and made a swale of her own. "Too bad Chopper didn't throw our pillows out the door after us." Her voice roiled with sarcasm.

It was only a minute before they each had their own little sleeping areas. They shrugged into their warm layers, in case it got cold in the night. By this time the sun was down below the horizon, leaving only a swath of pink and gray at the edges, which faded upward into the darker inky blue of the twilight sky.

They sat there for a few minutes staring at the horizon. Ezra had his legs folded under him. He half meditated, half simply watched a nice sunset. _If Kanan wasn't there, who would know how deep he went?_

Next to him, Sabine hugged her knees to her chest, twirling a stem of grass between her fingers. Ezra stayed silent. The Force murmured in the back of his head, but he was still enjoying the sunset to give in to it completely. He watched Sabine brush the soft grains back and forth in her palm experimentally. After a while, she spoke.

"I wonder whether Chopper is back at Atollon yet, and what he told Hera about his role in our adventures?"

"Nothing, I expect," Ezra replied.

Sabine looked up as he sat back from his heels and turned to her.

"Care for a game of G-H-O-S-T?" he asked.

Sabine agreed; neither of them were quite ready to sleep yet. Ezra was still too worked up in the adrenaline of being stranded, even if he was exhausted from their day. The game petered out when Ezra filled his letters first; he said it wasn't fair of Sabine to try to spell words in Mando'a.

Sabine yawned. "I think that's our cue to call it a rotation," she said. "G'night, Ezra."

"G'night, Bine," he drawled. The two of them settled into their makeshift beds and tried to sleep.

It was the middle of the night when Ezra noticed a tickle in the Force. He felt it in his dreams, first. Sitting upright cautiously, he looked around. His eyes adjusted quickly to the dark; then in the light of the moon, he saw two eyes staring back at him from among the grasses. Ezra reached into the Force— it was friendly, at least. He heard a rustle as it stepped forward in the grass. A low muzzle with three horns looked out. It was a kath hound. Ezra glanced involuntarily at Sabine next to him. He willed a tendril of Force to Sabine: _don't wake up. Stay asleep_. The animal raised one hoof, as if to walk forward. Ezra locked eyes with the hound, and shook his head at it. He used his hands: _shoo_.

The kath hound let out a puff of air: _whufff_ … then stepped back into the deep grasses from which it came. Ezra was completely awake now. He tried meditating for a while; listening in the Force to see if there were other kath hounds around. He only felt the one. From what he had heard, they were rare in the wild anyhow. The river was full of gar and other fish, though. He could feel the gently rocking flutter as they slept in the deeps. Lothal's waters were polluted by the factories, and almost dead. The Force of the river here was so joyful, not stained with black pollution.

Then he felt something else- a tingling sensation in the sky above him. This was new. He opened his eyes. To Ezra's amazement, the sky was covered in a shimmering carpet of green light. As he watched, it changed to reds and purples, rippling across the sky. It was beautiful. He reached over and shook Sabine's shoulder.

"Sabine," he hissed. "Wake up! You need to see this."

She sat bolt up and reached for her Westar in one motion. Then she saw the sky. "Oh." Her blaster dropped from her hand into the grass with a whisper. "Oh, Ezra," she sighed. "The colors!"

The two of them watched the waving display for some time before going back to sleep. Ezra tried to decide whether the crackle of the light was something he heard with his ears, or felt through the Force; he wasn't sure if Sabine heard it too. She hadn't commented on it. Eventually despite all her struggles to keep her eyes open, Sabine fell back asleep. Ezra took a last look at his teammate— she was smiling in her sleep— and went back to sleep himself.


	3. Chapter 3

"Good morning!"

Sabine noticed light outside her eyelids, but it was soon replaced by shadow. She opened her eyes to see Ezra looming over her. Sabine sat up and rubbed her eyes. A small slice of sun was just visible above the horizon; a strange group of birds chattered in the distance.

Ezra produced something from behind his back, and shoved it at Sabine. Startled, she scrabbled back on her hands and feet. Blinking in the early morning light, she drawled, "Whaaz that?"

"Shef'na fruit! I found it in the residential district."

Sabine pursed her lips. "You… found… it."

Ezra held up his palms. "It was lying on the ground outside someone's fence. They won't miss it."

This did it. Sabine sat up straight, fully alert now. One eyebrow quirked up at him. "It was on the ground?"

Ezra rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. "Okay, so I might have accidentally shaken the branch so that some fell off," he countered. "But they were ripe and going to fall in the street anyhow."

Sabine rolled her eyes. " _Bring war material with you from home, but forage on the enemy. Thus the army will have food enough for its needs,_ " said the Old Mandalorian _._ The Old Mandalorian had a point, she supposed. She held the shef'na to her nose and sniffed it.

"It's ripe," she muttered. Sabine pulled the proper knife from her boot and began peeling the fruit. Ezra sat across from her, tailor-style, and took a large bite out of his own shef'na.

The knife paused mid-pare, a curl of shef'na skin dangling. "Are you going to eat it just like that?" she asked.

Ezra shrugged. "When I was a street rat, I learned to not be picky. I didn't have a lot of time to eat if storekeepers were chasing me." He grinned. "And besides, Hera would say you should eat the skin because that's where all the vitamins are. We'll need plenty of energy to walk the last bit to Dantoo Base."

Sabine chuckled. "Hera would say that, wouldn't she? She'll be so pleased to know that we are being good and eating healthy, even in all this."

Once they finished, Sabine stood, brushing off her armor. She held out her hand to Ezra, and pulled him up.

"Ready?" Ezra asked.

"It's not like we have our toothbrushes and a 'fresher," she responded. "Let's get going."

They paused to refill their canteens at the fountain in the town square. Ezra cupped his hands under one of the streams and took a drink. He turned to Sabine, who was splashing some on her face. Their eyes met.

She sighed. "Look, I'm sorry for ruining your favorite shirt," she said. "I was in a hurry, and I didn't think."

Ezra smiled. "I'll try to remember to move my stuff sooner," he conceded. "Hopefully Zeb won't break the dryer again with all the fur he sheds."

People were just beginning to wake up and go about their business for the day. Here and there a few shopkeepers opened their awnings. Sabine looked around with the practiced eye of a scout. They needed to get moving. Sabine consulted the map on her wrist projector, and pointed into the badlands, where a series of creamy gray buttes were just visible on the horizon. "The base is that direction."

"Almost like home," Ezra replied. "But the rocks aren't right. Too pale."

At the outskirts of town, the packed dirt of Dantoo Town's streets gave way to a dirt road that ran between lush waving stems of grass so dark they were almost purple. Here and there blba trees stood watch. After a while, the path climbed up hills out of the floodplain. The grass was dryer on the plateau, and soon the dirt road turned to bare rock and patches of powdery white dust that puffed under their feet.

Sabine consulted her holo-map again. "Here's where we leave the road; we need to head into those mazes over there."

"Why can't they just build their base somewhere convenient," Ezra muttered. They each took another drink from their canteens, and left the road along Sabine's heading.

They were only a few klicks from the road, and deep into some very strange rock formations that looked like the head of an L3 droid, when Ezra and Sabine's wrist comms both pinged. They looked at each other, eyes wide. Ezra was first to activate his. A comforting blue holo-figure appeared over his hand.

"Hera!" Ezra cried.

Sabine rushed over to crowd in behind him.

"Oh thank the Goddess! I finally got through!" Hera shook her head with relief. "What happened to you? Dantoo Base says you never checked in yesterday."

Sabine leaned over Ezra's shoulder into the picture. "We're okay, Hera. Don't worry. There was a electromagnetic storm yesterday. It made some lovely auroras last night. It also completely jammed our comms, which is why we couldn't get through."

Hera's lekku twitched as she let out a sigh. "But _where_ are you? You're not at the base."

Ezra looked over his shoulder at Sabine. The two teenagers shared a wordless glance. Ezra's mouth twisted in uncertainty. Sabine took a deep breath. She pretended she was giving a calm after-action-report at the Academy; _only the facts for now, analysis later_.

"There seems to have been a mixup, Hera. Chopper dropped us off in a river canyon quite some distance from the base." Sabine flipped her lavender bangs out of her face. "We've been en route ever since. All my survival training from the Academy came in handy."

Hera's eyes narrowed and she pointed her finger at them. "Stop there, kids. Don't try to distract me." She turned behind her and yelled. "C1-10P! You get in here right now."

Ezra's eyebrows twisted over his comm holo. " _Why are you protecting him?_ " he mouthed at Sabine.

A moment later, Hera was joined in the holo by their nemesis.

"Brrr-whop?" Chopper inquired. He sounded sweet and innocent. But then his head swivelled and Sabine would have sworn the droid's optical receptor was giving them the stink eye.

Hera put both fists on her hips. "Did you abandon Spectre 5 and Spectre 6 in the wilderness in Dantooine?"

"Brrr- whop whoop, bwah, dah," it explained.

Hera's eyes narrowed. The droid rolled back a few centimeters. "Whoop dah whop brrr?"

"Chopper!" This time the droid rolled back further, almost out of the projection. "I cannot believe you did that. Just because I said I was glad for some time without the two of them bickering doesn't mean I wanted them permanently lost!"

The kids looked at each other in horror. Ezra rubbed the back of his neck. "If it makes you feel better at all, Hera, I think we've worked things out, for now."

Hera closed her eyes, putting her hand to her forehead. After a moment, she opened her eyes and looked at the teenagers again. When she spoke, her usual implacable calm was restored.

"I need you to comm me your coordinates. I will relay it to the Rebel base, and they will send out a party to find you and bring you in. Stay where you are, don't go anywhere." Her voice was firm. "Chopper will be returning to Dantooine, chaperoned by Zeb, to bring you your luggage…. When he gets back he can spend some time thinking about what he's done. He'll have plenty of time while he checks every rivet on the hull of the _Ghost_."

Sabine and Ezra nodded. Sabine keyed some information into her wrist communicator. "I'm sending you our coordinates now."

Hera reached forward to her holo controls. "Spectre 2 out."

Ezra turned to Sabine. "The dirty, little, conniving snot-hopper….. Oooo I'm going to rip out his wires when we get back."

"By the five moons, what will he think of next?" Sabine rolled her eyes. "I didn't say anything to Hera about Chopper because I wanted to let him hoist himself on his own explosives trying to explain what he did."

They sank down in a sandstone depression, leaning against one of the larger formations for support. Sabine relished the feeling of the warm stone against her back. A hint of tension eased in her back.

A few minutes later Ezra broke the silence with a wry laugh. "I can't believe this. What a rotation," he groaned.

"Aww, at least we make a good team. You got us those Dantooine Ice-Twists. Good job, Loth-rat." Sabine held out her hand for a fistbump. Ezra met her hand with his, but his smile didn't reach his eyes. She had seen this before: people sometimes crashed after surviving a battle and the adrenaline wore off.

Ezra took a deep breath. "Yeah, and all your when-I-was-at-the-Academy talk finally was useful."

"Hey!" Sabine punched him playfully on the arm. "I do not always talk about the Academy!"

"Oh yeah, you do."

"Do not…"

In the distance, two Rebels on speeders looked through their macrobinoculars at the castaways.

"Tell Dantoo base we found the Spectre detachment," said the first crewbeing.

As they focused their own lenses, the second Rebel asked, "Are they siblings?"

"Fulcrum didn't say, but they sure fight like it."

* * *

Author's Note:

I would like to thank the Gift Exchange organizers for this very fun activity! I would also like to thank the Garden of Ithilien for their encouragement to participate, especially AdelieP. The story benefited from conversations with VadersDayOff and OnlyMton; any mistakes are my own. Sabine's quotes are from Sun Tzu's "Art of War."

Finally, shout-out to AceOfStars16 for her prompt, which gave me not one but two story ideas. (I had to abandon the nearly-complete first plot outline when I realized it was horribly angsty and she asked for fluff, but I still hope to write it someday.) May the Fourth be with you.


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